This year, Heather and I are aiming to have a “creation-friendly” Lent. Environmental destruction is an important concern for Christians, and lately we have both felt the need to focus on how we ourselves are contributing to that destruction through own choices and behaviors. We are hoping that, through this season of Lent, we will become more deliberate in thinking about God’s concern for the planet and acting that out in our daily decisions.

The first Lent was extremely creation-friendly. Jesus wandered around in the wilderness and ate nothing, taking not a single thing away from the earth’s resources and simply being in the nature that God created. We are not going to go that far, but we do have four areas in which we intend to practice being creation-friendly this Lent:

1) Doing an environmental justice/creation care Scripture reading plan, to learn and to meditate upon what God says about the creation

2) Spending more time connecting to nature, hiking and being in God’s creation at least once a week

3) Committing to a plan to reduce our carbon footprint and do less harm to the environment in our lifestyle choices, especially in what we eat and drink

4) Sharing our efforts with others and learning from their experiences

We’ll be sharing more as we go along. In the meantime, please feel free to share your suggestions and comments, and may the Lent season renew us all.

Steve

In focus:  Matthew 11:2-11 (NIV)

I love Jesus’ response here. John (who, like many of my heroes, goes to jail for criticizing the actions of a corrupt government) wants to know who Jesus is – if his hopes, and those of Israel, are being fulfilled right before their very eyes. Jesus, even though he’s asked to, doesn’t give a direct answer to the question given by John’s disciples. He doesn’t give some long explanation of his identity, or offer much in the way of commentary. He simply points them to the evidence of what’s happening: sickness and disability, of all kinds, are being healed; death’s victories over humans are being reversed; and the poor are hearing good news.  In other words, God’s agenda – defeating the enemies of God’s creation, whether the oppressions of poverty or the oppressions of death and disease – is being accomplished.  And that, as far as Jesus is concerned, is enough of an answer to the question.

It strikes me as a great starting point for how we answer that question – “Who is Jesus?” – in our own lives: he is the one who takes care of the sick and the poor.  I would love to see what it would mean for us to begin there, and see where it takes us.

In focus: Isaiah 2:1-5 (NIV)

¹ This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

² In the last days

the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established

as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.

³ Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
⁴ He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

⁵ Come, descendants of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.

Coming into Advent, we are starting a season of waiting and expectation, looking forward to the time when Christ returns and everything is put right and renewed. Isaiah here gives us a great image of what that will look like – God’s temple is established on the highest mountain, and people come from all over the world to be there in that temple. In particular, God sits in that temple and resolves all the disputes and conflicts of the world. Instead of using war – a conflict resolution tactic whose historical success is parodied here – the nations of the world can simply go up to God’s mountain, and the problems are solved.  In the midst of a world consumed by disagreements, fights, and wars of every kind, we look forward to a world with perfect peace – because, through God’s judgments, there is perfect justice. No more Costa Rica – Nicaragua border disputes that could spill over into violence. No more fights over mining rights in places like Bougainville. No more wars about oil, nuclear programs, ideologies. Just God’s perfect justice, and God’s perfect peace. That’s something worth waiting for.

But, we don’t just wait for it to come. This vision motivates us to work to make it a reality here and now – if God wants perfect justice and perfect peace, why not start practicing right away? As we look forward to being with God on that mountain, learning God’s ways, walking in God’s paths, we can also think about ways to stop building our weapons of war, and instead creating tools of peace. God’s kingdom has no place for swords and spears, that can only kill and destroy; we need more plowshares and pruning hooks, that provide people with plenty. Let’s make it happen.

(Steve)

Edited by Amy Gopp, Christian Piatt, Brandon Gilvin, Chalice (Ingram, dist.), $16.99 paper (224p) ISBN 978-0-8272-3474-1 At a time when partisan politics involves backbiting and cynicism, here is a collection of essays about politics aimed at unity and hope. In the spirit of a friendly roundtable, the essay writers, mostly 20- and 30-something pastors, each discuss the importance of Christians’ involvement in political activism. The writers represent areas from Los Angeles to Bosnia and take up a variety of causes both systemic and personal, including genocide and affordable housing. Their diversity proves that Christians “are not a monolith” and must wade through what are characterized as competing truths in discerning whether to advocate. Some urge Christians to fight the power of empire, citing the way Jesus challenged the status quo to effect change. Others retreat from activism, citing Jesus’s pacifism. Yet the authors all agree that Christians should work against injustice in some way and should employ peaceful debate to work toward unity. Using their own tales of injustice in a post-9/11 world, they force Christians to wake up and take a stand–even if they themselves cannot agree on exactly what that should be.

(Steve)

We managed to get to our first Costa Rican farmers’ market today. Unfortunately, we had not been shopping at farmers’ markets back in the States – they’re a great way to get real, healthy food, and at lower prices too. But here there’s a farmers’ market every Saturday morning in the center of town, so after a nice morning of sleeping in, we went down there. There were a lot of options, including plenty of things we’re not used to (and weren’t sure what they were). We ended up with a pretty good assortment, though, as you can see from the picture above.

We ended up with: 2 pineapples; a papaya; lettuce; tomatoes; a cucumber; 6 heads of corn; 3 plantains; a kilo of potatoes; and 2 empanadas de pina (pineapple pastries). Price: 4950 colones (a little less than 1o dollars). So we’re happy, and our fridge is stocked (finally!). Hooray for farmers’ markets!

So, we’ve officially arrived in Costa Rica! We got into our new apartment at 6:30 this morning after surprisingly smooth travel – even with nuestro gatito (our cat), who did not enjoy the flight but managed admirably. As of today, we are living in Barrio Santa Cecilia, near the “downtown” of Ciudad Colon – a relatively small town in the Central Valley, to the south and west of San Jose. We’ve settled into our surroundings a little bit, and had a chance to walk down to the center of town – which is, of course, the Catholic church right across from the futbol (soccer) pitch.

Everything is going well, and we hope to be able to stay in touch with all of you, both through this blog (which we will, hopefully, be updating regularly) as well as through Facebook and Skype. If you don’t have my Skype name yet, feel free to add me – stephen.t.holt. I’ll have Heather add hers soon.

Paz!

Steve

If we are people committed to economic justice, can we afford to have strong views on certain issues?

The reality in American politics right now is that if you have a strong position on particular issues – and I’m personally thinking of abortion and homosexuality – you are, very often, cutting yourself off from being heard by a rather large number of people. Incredibly “pro-life?” Anything you say about economic justice will probably be discounted on the other side of the aisle. Strongly “pro-choice?” The reaction is the same on the other side. (And yes, those labels absolutely require quotation marks.) Bring up same-sex marriage, and you have the same problem, regardless of which direction you think we’re heading with the recent federal ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional.

But if your commitment is, first and foremost, to issues of economic justice – is it right to be so strong in those positions that you end up cutting off potential allies? If being assertive in your position on same-sex marriage is going to result in losing (insert whoever opposes your view here), is it better to back up and tone it down? I mean, the reality is, the poor in the United States and around the world have more than enough problems as it is. If someone is actually willing to be part of the solutions to those problems, do I need to be creating an obstacle for them by challenging them for opposing/supporting same-sex marriage?

It probably comes down to a question of priority. I know where I stand on both of those issues (and it requires a nuance that is eliminated by sound-bites like “pro-life” and “pro-choice”), but I’ve worked with plenty of people who disagree with me from the left and the right on both of those issues. Because, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who’s committed to working for the poor and the oppressed is doing alright by me. And, usually, the conversations I’ve had about these issues within this context have tended to produce far more light and be far more transformative, at least for me, than most of the discussions that I’ve seen in the world of in-your-face “moral stands.”

So I should go back to my paper, but I’m putting this out here, more for questioning and processing than to offer any type of final answer. Would love to hear from others how they’ve dealt with this issue, or how they’re processing it right now.

Tormented and abused, while the rest of the city of Los Angeles watched the Lakers play in the finals, Jorge went into his bedroom and hung himself.

11 years old. How can this happen? How can a little boy kill himself? I never even knew him and my heart feels heavy from the burden this boy could no longer bear.

I read the story about his death in the LA Times, part of a continuing story they are doing on the many problems in the LA county Dept of Children and Family Services. The department is completely inept, with so many cases that each social worker barely has time to look into each abuse report. The various agencies rarely collaborate, leading to a situation like Jorge’s. If they had had his information available when they visited him, they would have seen his long history of abuse. That his step father was not supposed to be living with him even though he was the one to open the door…etc. etc.

The day he died, he told his teacher he was so tired of being hit and abused that he wanted to die.  He was miserable- bullied at school, abused at home. A little boy dead. He was deprived of love for so long, he probably felt like he had died years earlier.

As the people of God, we must be reaching out to these children who have no one. We should have been there for Jorge. We, the people of God, should have been there for him, and shown him through our community that he was loved, and valued, and so precious to God. He’s gone now, and I missed my chance to show him care and compassion. It’s only now, after his death that he haunts me, asking for love…but not only for him, but for all the other children in this county who are abused and neglected and just want a hug and want to feel worth something. We were too late for Jorge, but not for the thousands of other children in the system in this city.

As Christians, we need to renew the passion that the early church had for helping orphans. The early church was known by its willingness to take in the unwanted, the unloveables. When Romans would cast their unwanted babies outside to die, Christians would come and adopt the children into their community and treat them as their own. This in itself was so remarkable that outsiders knew something was different and special about these Christians.

I believe the Evangelical community has lost this. We focus on saving the unborn, which is admirable and important, but at the expense of the children who are alive and suffering in our cities, our communities today. What will we do for them? We need to renew our focus on adoption and foster care even though older children are difficult and have many issues. Ultimately, we are all unlovable, and God first loved us. We are all illegitimate, but God has called us sons and daughters.

I hope Jorge has found the love and acceptance that he deserved to receive on earth. And I hope that his death will not be totally in vain, but will spur us all on to reach out to the children in our cities- the ones in the system, the “unlovables”, the ones who have no one- and be their friends and a source of love in their lives.

Had a great opportunity to be part of a protest and rally outside the Andaz Hyatt in West Hollywood yesterday. 63 people – including a number of my CLUE people like Rev. David Farley, Rev. Liz Munoz, Jose Luis Gutierrez, and, of course, Bridie – were arrested in a demonstration of solidarity with workers who are losing their jobs, their wages, and their healthcare – even as these Hyatts are not only recovering their profits but watching them grow. I have included a few pics from the action. Thanks guys! And si se puede!